Athena
by La Flamingo
Summary: Women, you discover, stumble across Project Mayhem in Hein Tower, the evil demon that cackled over town and in their own homes, their husbands with scars and cuts and coal eyes and checkerboard teeth. And women, they create their own counterbalance. AU.


One time Tyler told you to think of Fight Club and Project Mayhem as a He-Mans-Woman-Hater club. The women, after all, had effectively neutered society, created men with no balls and men with no backbones.

It was their fault, in some way.

And then, in another way, it was history's fault, the endangered unscrewing pandas fault, and maybe even that bastard father of yours fault. But what Tyler didn't tell you was that females had heard of the Fight Club, of the Project.

Sure, it wasn't supposed to be spoken of, but what Tyler and you had forgotten was that women have the unnatural tendency to figure stuff out. They are suspicious by nature, cunning and crafty as if it had been tattooed into their blood, programmed into the ultra-complex wiring of their brain.

Women began noticing beat-up husbands and blood on the pillowcase.

Women began noticing random scuffles in the middle of town, hairless men in black coats circling, hovering, attacking and provoking.

Women began noticing something different, cubicle comrades coming in with eyes like dark wells and smiles.

That said they didn't exist.

They weren't here,

or (and sometimes this was their favorite)

Hi. This is BLOOD. This is SO ZEN. This is beyond your preachy Opera bullshit and your "let's be friends" mantras and this is REAL. This is BLOOD. This is SWEAT.

This is DEFIANCE.

So there. The women knew something was up, just like you did when Ex-Angel Face came up to the door and waited, waited, waited for three days while Tyler and you played Good Cop and Bad Cop.

Women aren't stupid. Marla was scary bat-shit crazy but if there was one thing she wasn't, it was stupid.

Tyler didn't tell you this. Maybe he assumed you knew.

But of course, Tyler didn't tell you a lot of things. HE was Project Mayhem and HE was Fight Club and HE was a GOD, a creature that Space Monkeys worshiped and praised, praised, praised and you were always trying to find for an explanation.

Women, you discover, stumble across Project Mayhem in Hein Tower, the evil horned demon that cackled over town and in their own homes, their husbands with scars and cuts and coal-eyes and checkerboard teeth.

And women, they create their own counterbalance.

Every action has a reaction. Forces push against each other all the time in order to find equilibrium and stability.

Newton's Laws.

Physics.

You wake up in La Guardia, and your eyes feel like shells with sandy-crabs lurking inside them, hiding from the world outside.

You wake up in security at Dulles.

Hello, LAX.

You wake up and suddenly you're back at the Paper Mill and Big Bob, big Space Monkey bald Bob with his arms ripped again and the bitch-tits now more frightening than originally pathetic says that war is imminent.

You tell him to go away.

You ask him since when.

And then Big Bob, bitch-tits Bob, says that Durden has been telling them all this.

You wake up at O'Hare.

You wake up in Dallas.

You wake up and the Mechanic is driving the car and says that there is a resistance reminiscent of '50's Leave It to Beaver and the housewife in the apron smiling, smiling, smiling and giving the kids cookies that for all you know could be laced with cyanide and household chemicals.

This is the housewife with the shiny teeth and the sharp eyes.

This is the housewife who hides a knife under her bed and threatens her blood-stained husband with it one night and then vanishes after the husband confesses.

What you weren't told

(Tyler made sure of this)

was that the man who confessed only confessed because the housewife with her shiny, sun-bright bones that ground things together was very close to removing his manhood, and the kids were in the next room.

This man is no longer in Fight Club.

But the Space Monkeys thought that killing him would be too much.

Or, at least, Tyler said it would be too much.

So they let him go, in shame. Back to his neutered existence where he is the stay-at-home D(e)ad taking care of his kids while the wife has vanished into thin air.

Tyler Durden appears magically one night and motions that you be quiet.

"Do you know where Marla is?" He asks you, and you tell him

No.

He tells you that someone broke the rules and we're paying for it.

"Watch Marla," Tyler says.

"Watch her because she's bat-shit crazy and the housewives with knives know something."

You try joking.

Stepford Wives?

And Tyler gives you a look that could cause a gas station to explode, Venus di Milo to try to protect what little modesty she had in the first place and makes you look away for a minute.

"I've got to go," Tyler says, and before you can tell him to stop, he's gone, slamming the door behind him.

You wake up and a Space Monkey says that the women fought off ten of the Mischief department in the Allen Complex, wounding five and killing no one.

A Space Monkey is scared. The mouth that kisses the back of his palm no longer gleams but shines dully and he caps his head with the hand and tries to keep calm and ZEN-like.

You are ZEN. You do not know this now, but you are ZEN. Tyler Durden is gone, gone, gone, vanished like a star that explodes billions of miles away and blinks out of existence but you are ZEN and calm and decide that you cannot control Project Mayhem and that the Space Monkeys will go to Tyler soon enough.

You wake up to the phone ringing, ringing, ringing and pick up to hear a light, feminine voice on the other side.

She says,

hello, is this the Paper Mill Soap company?

And you tell her

wrong number.

She laughs, a tinkling noise of shattering glass and chimes dropping to the ground.

I'm so sorry.

And the line is dead.

Next day three Space Monkeys have vanished and Tyler is suddenly at the front door.

"We have a problem," he says.

You ignore him for a second but that doesn't last long because he's choking you, hand wrapped around your neck like a vise as you're slammed up against the fridge (and the rich bloated fat, frozen beyond insulation).

"This is no joke," he says.

"Do not fuck with me, because I am not in the mood."

The breakdown of society, the deer hunting through New York city and the vine latticework on the great skyscrapers is being undermined by women.

"They are fighting back," Tyler says, hissing. They are fighting back and he is not ZEN and this BLOOD is not COOL and they should not be SCREWING this up.

Women are fucking with Project Mayhem, screwing with the legend and the God of Tyler Durden and it is not acceptable.

He WILL hunt elk in the plains near the Lexington River. He WILL NOT be back in cubicle world, where YOUR boss wears a blue tie which makes you instantly know that it's Tuesday and you've wasted your life doing absolutely nothing.

"No," Tyler says, obsidian eyes and bruised skin. He will not do that. You will not do that.

You wake up in the car, but this time Ex-Angel Face is driving and he's weaving in and out of traffic like he's done this before.

You ask him what the hell is going on.

He glances at you for the briefest of moments before swerving between a Chrysler and a '86 Golf.

Slalom run.

He says that the women have picked up more Space Monkeys, and the men in the law enforcement departments are finding that the chicks are damn hard to get. They're invisible. A Space Monkey could go out and try to find one, take one down, but they don't distinguish themselves like the Monkeys, have no kisses on their hands and no shaven heads and no punched eyes or lips.

They are beautiful. Unassuming. Dangerous in every way.

Tyler Durden is not scared, but Ex-Angel Face is antsy, fire, fire, fire under his ass without any extinguisher to put it out.

Where's the Mechanic, you ask him.

Ten seconds he stares at you completely, unsure, and then he says

They killed the Mechanic.

Fuck, you exhale, hands shaking.

You say it again, just to make it clear.

Fuck.

And then Tyler says, besides you, "this has to stop."

Ex-Angel Face shoots a look in the rear view mirror and then gulps.

You're telling me, he says.

You turn around in your seat and it's then you see the black CTS, growling in your face, headlights gleaming and motor roaring.

You realize, then, that you're being chased.

And the Space Monkeys, they can't help you.

"Why aren't they being barricaded?" Tyler asks, calm as the ticking, ticking clock of a time-bomb.

Methodical.

Clean.

Ex-Angel Face bites his lip for only the briefest of moments.

We don't know who's who, he says after a moment. They've jammed radios, kidnaped top Space Monkeys and made it clear that Project Mayhem is being pursued by Project Athena.

Tyler laughs.

"Project Athena?" he asks.

Goddess of wisdom and war, you say, and you can't help but smile at their ingenuity, their ability to react to Tyler's actions as gracefully as they did.

Tyler finds it funny, too, apparently, but his humor is short lived.

"Stop the car," he says quietly. Ex-Angel Face glances at him (not the Mechanic, not cool and unruffled and totally obedient, idealistic) and hesitates.

"Stop. The. Car." Tyler says again, slower this time.

Ex-Angel Face isn't reluctant this time and the brakes are slammed on, ABS thrumming, thrumming, thrumming through his foot and car shuddering, screeching to a grinding halt. CTS fender meets BMW bumper and the two battle it out, screaming metal with license-plate teeth bared and ready to bite.

You think you hear the crack of a gun and duck under the seat, trying to keep your head under the window.

But instead of a bullet, you get a rock with a letter wrapped around it, held together with a blue scrunchie, tearing through the rear window with an audible shattering of glass.

That Cadillac, front bumper smashed but driver seemingly unperturbed, abruptly flits out into the night, lights off as it glides away and license plate nonexistent.

You wonder how the woman driving hasn't crashed since she's turned off her lights but brush it away as Tyler jerks the rock out of your hands and violently pulls the letter out from beneath the scrunchie.

The car is stopped. Ex-Angel Face does nothing, says nothing but stares behind at Tyler ass if waiting for a command.

Tyler is reading the letter, ripping it out from the envelop and at the silence that fills the car, looks up.

Cool.

Calm.

"Well?" he says.

Ex-Angel Face waits.

"Get driving," Tyler demands of Ex-Angel Face. "Get driving and get driving fast."

BMW coughs and the cold air crawls in through the rear window and you vaguely wonder if you're getting carbon monoxide poisoning from the fucked up exhaust under the car.

You wake up in Denver.

You wake up in Chicago.

You wake up and you're in a beautiful hotel lobby and across the way, perched daintily on a leather chair with her red-leather sofa lips is Marla, smoking a cigarette and surrounded by Athenians.

Space Monkeys bristle like knives from your sides, and Tyler watches by your shoulder with something resembling amusement on his face.

This is something called irony.

Tyler Durden loves irony almost as much as he loves anarchy.

And this is why, when he steps across the broad lobby with its tile built on the blood of the lower class, the under-tiers of society whose purpose was only to make the rich feel better about their shitty superiority, Tyler smiles and opens his arms wide, as if to embrace Marla.

But Marla is FEMALE ZEN. That scary-as-shit BUDDHIST stuff and everything else. She has changed from wanting Tyler's abortion to deciding that castrating him would probably be more entertaining.

That scares you, just a little bit.

And this is why Marla does not embrace Tyler, but instead blinks slowly and blows a smoky 'o' in his face.

You are Jack's Adrenal Gland going haywire.

You are Jack's short-twitch muscles screaming to run.

You are Jack wondering why the hell you are here and Tyler is sitting down across from Marla and smiling.

"Hello, Marla," he says.

And you think, hello, this is a badly-plotted movie.

And Marla grins and nods.

"Hello, Tyler Durden."

The two parties pause and size each other up, and for the briefest of moments you realize that this really doesn't surprise you, and that Marla could really make a great antagonistic female if she wanted to.

Something happens between the two, maybe a compromise, an agreement.

You understand that Marla and Tyler begin to split cities, bargaining millions of people and billions of dollars as if they were nothing but poker chips.

Marla gets New York.

Tyler gets Los Angeles.

Both of them fight over Chicago, but it is finally decided that Tyler can get it.

Marla gets Detroit and Dallas.

Tyler gets Pheonix.

And they decide that both shall own Washington D.C.

You now this, because Tyler knows this.

And you know that change is imminent because as both parties leave their respective couches and seats, the Athenians smile sweetly at the Space Monkeys with their shaven heads and defensive demeanors.

The He-Man Woman-Hater club has been sabotaged by the Boys-Are-Stupid club.

And you know now that you should've seen this coming a _long _time ago.

"We've been ass-raped," Tyler says in the car after a long moment.

Yes, you couldn't agree more.


End file.
